3 Mandatory Landing Page Design Elements

The purpose of a landing page is to educate, engage, and convert interested users into paying users. Unfortunately, many landing pages fall flat. In most cases, this is a result of poor design and structure. As a designer – or marketer in charge of overseeing the landing page design process – it’s important that you’re fully aware of which design elements are mandatory for success.

3 Elements to Include

There’s nothing easy about designing a landing page. If you think it’s easy, this is likely because you’ve fallen into a rut where you simply recycle and replace different elements depending on the project. You can’t do this and expect positive results. Any effective landing page must be given individualized attention. With that being said, there are three basic elements that must be included – in some shape or form – every time.

1. Strategic CTA Placement

Any good landing page should only have one underlying CTA. However, this doesn’t mean you can only put that CTA in a single place. In fact, you should spread these calls out all over the page – and use different language each time.

Check out this page from investing guru Timothy Sykes. If you study this landing page, you’ll notice that he includes at least five different CTAs on the page. They read as follows: “Apply to Work With Me,” “Yes, Give Me My Free Lessons,” “Ready? Let’s Go,” “Click Here to Learn More,” and again, “Yes, Give Me My Free Lessons.”

Each of these CTAs is offering the user the same value proposition – but they are simply presented in different places with different verbiage. As you can guess, this is much more effective than simply including one CTA.

2. Social Proof

The value of social proof in landing page design cannot be understated. Since landing pages are obviously viewed as somewhat biased by the end user, you must work hard to overcome this by providing social proof. This can come in the form of third-party data, customer reviews, testimonials, or anything else that reaffirms.

This landing page from WebDAM is a good example. The page includes two separate types of social proof. The first involves the use of corporate logos from current customers. You’ll see logos of brands like Zillow, Salesforce, Starbucks, and more. (Pretty reassuring, right?) Secondly, social proof is exhibited in the “Don’t Take Our Word For it” section that features three client testimonials and ratings. Powerful stuff!

3. Clear Headline

The headline on a landing page may not be as important as the CTA, but it plays a major role in funneling users to the CTA. In other words, if your headline is ineffective, there’s a chance that the user won’t stick around long enough to even seen your value offering. Here are some keys to think about when crafting landing page headlines:

Short and concise is the name of the game. Ideally, it should be less than 10 words and never more than 20

It needs to grab the user’s attention. It should cause them to do a double-take

The headline should do a good job of explaining what the landing page is about without the user ever reading the rest of the copy on the page

In order to have an effective and high-converting landing page, your headline needs to satisfy these three criteria. Hint: Most marketers don’t spend enough time on the headline.

Design a Killer Landing Page

Every landing page is different. That’s what makes the design and marketing fields so interesting. With that being said, there are a number of critically important components that can’t be left out. If you want to be successful, then you must find a way to include the features discussed in this article. How you use them is totally up to you!